Hey, strategy fans! Age of Empires Mobile is launching globally on October 17! Join the final test phase, the “Global Military Exercise,”
Gacha games are a significant and influential gaming model that has enthralled modern mobile gamers. They resonate both with popular culture and gamers which has created a wave of mobile-first titles focused on random chance more than gameplay. The impact spreads beyond the games themselves, fueling gacha like elements in many of today’s modern live service games. Ever wondered where this came from and how it spread so far and wide? We’re going into detail on each of these elements and more with our ultimate guide to gacha games. Everything from what they are to where they came from to where they spread to. Join us as we take this adventure through random chance, waifus and pity rolls. What are Gacha Games? The gumball vending machines that were filled with capsules containing various micro-toys (of various rarity) are the original inspiration for gacha games. Gashepon (capsule-toy) is the basis of…
Tim Cain is known as part of the legendary trio behind Fallout 1 & 2. He also worked at Troika and programmed Vampire: The Masquerade and one of my favorite games Arcanum. He recently released a video lambasting Carbine and NCSoft while disclosing some deep interpersonal issues at Carbine. Tim’s video is authentic and his recount is accurate by all means. I covered WildStar heavily from 2011 onward and the stories back then were well known. Carbine was a toxic and unhealthy workplace which had the potential to release the best MMO of the golden age but instead failed with 9 years of development time and a further four post-launch to win back everyone ala Final Fantasy XIV. The video is very misleading in some ways. It argues that there was a lack of unified vision. That’s true, but it was also completely the fact that everyone at Carbine was…
Everything from Final Fantasy XVI to Path of Exile are having their conventions return to their regular cadence. During 2020-2022 it was rather rough for travel and events. Now, in 2023, it seems that more and more games are returning to their yearly fan meet-ups. That’s awesome! To celebrate, this year’s Final Fantasy FXIV Fan Festival is rather awesome: You get a small tote, some nice pins and a stress ball of grapes. This joke is not only rather neato but it also is a return to the things that make the video game community awesome. For some context, some grapes in FFXIV had bugged out and were rendering in their low-polygonal version. A lot of games will derender an asset the further you are from it since you can’t see the fidelity. In this instance, the game wasn’t properly rendering the grapes. It’s neat that games are returning back…
It can be a lot to figure out what to play in Warhammer 40k: Darktide. The operators, which are the primary top hierarchy for the class, all come with drastically different playstyles. A Preacher will do mostly melee while a Sharpshooter will do mostly ranged and there isn’t much in-between. What you pick is what you play. The good news is the game gives you multiple character slots so you can go in and play whatever operators you’d like. You can also make an operator, try it out for a bit and then reroll and skip the cutscenes and get all the starting progress made up in about 30 minutes. Don’t ever hesitate to try another class! Below we’re going to break the operators into our best generalist picks (i.e. you want to do everything on a single character) and then explain what the best specializations are. We also give…
Dune is such a good book, at least book one. It’s so good and it’s rife with political intrigue and a world that, as someone who is creative, is just jealous to read it. It deprives me of the ability to come up with most of the ideas on my own. Removing ranged weapons with personal shields is just such a fun way to completely upend sci-fi combat. Woah, upend combat? That’s…. sounding like something that would be a really good game. You’ve got massive political intrigue, tons of lore, places to visit and a combat system that’s very unique. So, where the games at? Oh not looking for something that’s not sci-fi to play, try give FFXIV a try. It’s more fantasy based and way less focused on spicepunk like Dune. The Games that Exist The following Dune games exist and you’ll see something troubling very quickly: Game NameYearGenreSystemsDune1992Adventure…
FFXIV is one of the few MMOs out there that still require a monthly subscription fee, along with the likes of World of Warcraft and uh, I’m sure there is some more out there. Point being, if you want everything the game has to offer you have to pay the subscription fee. Of course, like WoW, Final Fantasy XIV let’s you play for free with some limitations. Unlike WoW, the free trial is actually insanely lofty and pretty much let’s you play most of the game without ever having to subscribe. A Note for Those Who Have Ever Purchased the Base Game Bruh, you’ll have to start over. You’ll have to make an all new Square Enix account in order to play the free trial and, if at any time you upgrade from the free trial, you can not return. So keep that in mind. The good news is that…
So you’re converting to FFXIV from WoW and are ready to take on the world of Final Fantasy, the MMO, round two. A little back story, there was Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) which was another MMO that was pretty… interesting. It was, I would say, a game of patience and challenge loved by many, played by few. Then came FFXIV which followed on the coattails of the FFXIII for the PS3 which was a weird game because it was very linear compared to the open world Final Fantasy single player games of before. FFXIV when it originally launched was panned and then Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was… born? I guess you could say. That’s the game we’re playing today and it was remade to be better than ever and is, for a tab-targeting game truly a AAA masterpiece in the genre now. After expansions iterating on the design,…
RoleGenerator was launched in July 2021 oriented to helping dungeon masters and roleplaying game enthusiasts with generating a lot of the day to day minutia of their roleplaying campaigns. As of right now, they have 28 modules divided into two categories: Dungeons & Dragons and generic roleplaying generators. The latter refers to narrative content or content that isn’t specific to any game system and ubiquitous across any type of roleplaying gaming. There are modules focused purely on roleplaying, my favorite being the land and event generator which will take a terrain type and generate flavor text and events that randomly could occur which is great for fleshing out tile by tile what’s there (or even in building rooms for a MUD). Their D&D module generates a shop with inventory, which is useful in building some much needed randomness between shops. Many of the modules include in-depth looks what the generator…
If you have fond memories of the good ‘ol days of games from bygone eras then you may want to consider buying games now instead of later, no matter which day you read this. The reason being that physical game media is becoming more rare by the day as games break, get thrown out and are lost to the fates of time. The prices of which are increasing, especially as older games which used cardboard for their cases begin to decay from moisture and age. The community and market for physical video games remained rather stable for a long period of time. Generally speaking, games were worth a percentage of their retail price based on popularity, with more popular games taking a smaller percentage of their retail on third party sites like eBay. For instance, a $49.99 game would likely sale for $35 on eBay used for the longest time,…